We are about to see who the Australian Labor Party really is, in 2025.

The Coalition is done. As far as repudiations go, it doesn’t get much more brutal than what the nation delivered on Saturday night. 

The worst result for the Liberal party since Menzies. Its leader turfed out of the Parliament along with most future leadership candidates. Swings against the party in every jurisdiction and most seats, including crucially, the outer suburbs that were supposed to be the new pathway to electoral relevancy.

There is no need to ask the Coalition, or its supporters in the political landscape such as News Corp, what it thinks needs to happen about anything in the future.

As the result became apparent, commentators from within the Coalition and its media arm were arguing that Dutton lost because he didn’t embrace Trump enough. 

It’s hard to tell at this point whether this isn’t just some long term embedded espionage project coming to fruition. Voters didn’t just reject Dutton and his ilk, they consigned them to irrelevancy.

But will Labor? Because we are about to find out whether Labor has the bravery to govern without the approval of right-wingers. 

This victory isn’t a thumping endorsement of Labor – it’s a rejection of mask-off, hard-right politics. But history tells us Labor won’t see it that way, and that’s not good for anyone.

Labor deserves credit for a disciplined campaign. Party Secretary Paul Erickson was right to advise the parliamentary wing to hold its nerve and to let inflation and cost of living pressures appear to ease, to get Albanese out in electorates from January – and to let the inevitable flow on effects from Trump’s policies to turn flirtation into revulsion.

But just because there is now just one major political outfit in this country capable of actually running a disciplined and professional election campaign doesn’t mean Labor has a mandate to stick to its middle of the road mediocracy.

Throughout the campaign, Albanese’s net approval rating stayed in negative territory – it just wasn’t as bad as Dutton’s. 

In the final Newspoll before the election day, Albanese rated -10 per cent and Dutton -27 per cent. 

Combine Dutton’s unpopularity with the most disastrous election campaign in modern public memory and you have voters flocking to the least worst option.  

Dutton was the inevitable end point of the Liberal party that John Howard nursed into the electorate. 

Avaricious, grasping and elitist, he embraced the worst of what Howard promised. There’s a certain irony that having dog whistled for white supremacy, his entire political career – and he himself – has been replaced by a white woman born in South Africa.  

But don’t be surprised if you never hear from Dutton again. A multi-millionaire many times over, Dutton has never cared for public service beyond the power it gave him personally.  

His politics was cruel and brutish and he fought against inclusion, tolerance and generosity with fervour. He spent the last week of the election campaign elevating a culture war started by self-confessed neo-Nazis. 

The 2022 election was a harbinger of doom for the Liberal party which it deliberately ignored. It remains unclear whether Labor will do the same.

Labor spent the past three years pretending its hands were tied on issues of integrity, religious protections, climate, sanctioning Israel, tax reform, poverty, inequality and housing because it didn’t have bipartisan support.

It was bullshit then. It is even more so now. Voters did not overwhelmingly endorse Labor. 

The cratering of the Coalition makes this seem like a massive Labor win when the party barely saw an increase in its primary vote. But minor parties like the Greens did see an increase, as did independents. 

It’s continuing a modern trend where third parties are emerging as bigger challengers – so much so that psephologists are finding it harder to determine who should be in the top two for electorate contests.  

It would be a mistake for Labor to take this result and see it as an endorsement of more of the same. If Labor does not do something with power this time round to materially improve people’s lives and reform the country, it is heading down the same path as the Coalition. 

Albanese will probably head to Washington in the next week or so to state Australia’s case to the White House. That will be one of the first indications of whether Labor has actually decided to change course and set Australia on a new path.

If May 3 delivered “a new hope” (another Star Wars reference for those who missed it) then May the Fourth be with those who have given this government one more chance to be the hope it promised for more than a decade.

Australia has very real issues. Our tax system is entrenching generational inequality. Secure housing depends on luck and wealth. Fossil fuel vested interests rank higher than a burning planet. Speaking against a live-stream genocide has been treated as worse than the genocide itself. Poverty is treated as a photo opportunity and not something government has any real power to change.

And if the conservative political party Australia said no to is against any changes, well then, the so-called progressive government’s hands are tied.

Australia said no to what Dutton. Murdoch and co tried to shove down their throats. Will Labor do the same, or will it continue to ignore the will of voters and bypass progressive senators in order to curry the favour of those it claims to be diametrically opposed to?

A small swing has delivered a huge opportunity. But also a message. Will Labor listen? 

Amy Remeikis is chief political analyst for the The Australia Institute. You can read more from her and the institute here.

During World War II, within the walls of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, a Jewish prisoner secretly penned a short note and hid it inside a violin he had crafted under harrowing circumstances — a message to the future that would remain undiscovered for more than 80 years.

"Trial instrument, made under difficult conditions with no tools and materials," the worn note read.

The origins of the violin, built in 1941 by Franciszek "Franz" Kempa while imprisoned by the Nazis at Dachau in southern Germany, remained unnoticed for decades.

It was not until art dealers in Hungary sent the instrument out for repairs — after having stored it for years among a set of purchased furniture — that its history came to light.

Although the instrument's craftsmanship pointed clearly to a skilled maker, the professional who was repairing it was puzzled by the poor quality of the wood and the crude tools used to create it, which did not match the evident skill involved.

"If you look at its proportions and structure, you can see that it's a master violin made by a man who was proficient in his craft," said Szandra Katona, one of the Hungarian art dealers who discovered the origins of the violin.

"But the choice of wood was completely incomprehensible."

Motivated by the contradiction, the professional disassembled the violin, revealing Kempa's hidden note — an apparent explanation, even an apology, from a master violin maker forced by the brutal limitations of his captivity to build an instrument that fell short of his own standards.

Dachau, located near Munich, was the first concentration camp established by the Nazis in March 1933.

It initially housed political prisoners but later became a model for other camps, imprisoning Jews, Roma, clergy, homosexuals, and others targeted by the Nazi regime.

Over time, it became a site of forced labour, medical experiments, and brutal punishment, and remained in operation until it was liberated by American forces on April 29, 1945.

At least 40,000 people are believed to have died there due to starvation, disease, execution, or mistreatment.

There is ample evidence that musical instruments were present in concentration camps across Central and Eastern Europe during World War II.

For propaganda purposes, the Nazis often permitted or even encouraged the formation of musical groups to give a false impression to the outside world about life in the camps.

However, all known instruments that survived Dachau are believed to have been brought in by prisoners.

Kempa's "violin of hope", as it has come to be called, is the only known instrument actually built inside the camp.

It is unknown how the violin left Dachau and ultimately made its way to Hungary. But Kempa, according to documents provided to the Hungarian art dealers by the museum at the Dachau memorial site, survived the war and returned to his native Poland to continue making instruments before dying in 1953.

The documents also suggest that Kempa was known to the Nazis as an instrument maker — something Tamás Tálosi, one of the art dealers, believes may have spared him the fate of millions of others who perished in the camps.

"We named it the 'violin of hope' because if someone ends up in a difficult situation, having a task or a challenge helps them get through a lot of things," Mr Tálosi said.

AP

Turning on the lights is something we do without thinking, but have you ever thought about what makes it possible?

With the press of a finger, we interact with ‘Australia’s largest machine’ — the National Electricity Market (NEM), which spans 5,000 kilometres north to south along the continent’s eastern seaboard and supplies just the right amount of electricity through almost 800,000 kilometres of power lines.

You might not have thought about it, but understanding how it works will help you understand the implications of the policies Australians are voting for at this election.

Sounds complicated? Don’t worry, we’re here to step you through how it works, what it could look like in the future, and what plans by the Coalition for nuclear energy in Australia mean for the transition.

You’ll never look at a power bill the same way again.

To help us make sense of it all, we’ve turned to one of Australia’s leading energy experts — Dylan McConnell from the University of New South Wales.

Dr McConnell says the changes in Australia’s energy mix over the past two-and-a-half decades have been profound, and we’re further along the transition to the system of tomorrow than people might expect.

“We’re very much on the path towards a renewables dominated system firmed (backed up) by storage and a little bit of peaking gas.”

Where do energy prices come from?

Let’s look at the economics, starting with demand.

Over a typical 24 hours, demand for energy builds through the day and continues into the late afternoon or evening as people come home from school or work and start using appliances like TVs, lights and air conditioners.

An important distinction needs to be made here. There is the overall demand for electricity in any given day and then there is the demand excluding rooftop solar, which can be a very significant source of supply indeed. But more on that later.

Now let’s look at how demand is met.

Meet AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator. AEMO’s job is to manage the grid and ensure we have enough energy — not too little, and not too much.

AEMO is like a conductor, orchestrating the sale of power from generators — via the poles-and-wires networks — to retailers, who ultimately sell it to homes and businesses. Often, generators and retailers will be one and the same business.

This is the energy “grid” or “market”. Australia has two main grids: the NEM covering most of the population, and the Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM), which is Western Australia’s biggest.

The NEM and WEM run like proper markets. Power stations set their prices competitively to sell energy to customers (energy retailers). AEMO runs the market and will make sure there’s enough energy available to meet demand.

Logically, we aim to buy the cheapest energy first. In this example, say it’s coal.

Conceptually, AEMO will progressively call on more expensive sources of energy once the cheapest supply is exhausted.

Importantly, the market price for energy is set by the most expensive plant needed at a given time and this price is paid to all subsequent generators.

Like in any market, how generators decide to set their prices is based on a variety of factors. For example, if there’s a lot of sun available, a solar farm can offer to sell its supply for less.

If your plant’s operating costs are high, that limits how low you can afford to drop your prices. Or if all other competing plants are sold out (like during evening peak demand), you can charge a premium.

Solar and wind are the cheapest forms of power because they have free fuel. They can outcompete everything else when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

Typically, gas is the most expensive form of generation, and its rate often sets the price of electricity at peak times. Its flexibility as a source of supply means gas can remain offline much of the time and come on only when needed.

Sources like batteries and pumped hydropower (which functions like batteries) act like gas, with the added benefit that they can soak up cheap renewable energy during the day and release it in the evening when needed.

But the grid used to be much simpler — it was virtually all coal.

Renewables enter the picture

If we take a look at the NEM (the grid covering most of Australia’s population), we can trace back its evolution over time.

Much of this change has taken place thanks to policies aimed at making renewable energy cheaper and more competitive. But Australia has never had a ban on new coal-fired power stations, most of which were built decades ago.

Those plants weren’t designed to last forever. Like any piece of machinery, we eventually need to replace them. And, according to many industry analysts, renewable energy sources these days are the cheapest way of doing it.

But while they may be the cheapest, they operate in a very different way to coal-fired power.

The shape of supply

Let’s look at an average day’s energy mix in New South Wales as an example.

You can see that solar and coal are the two biggest contributors — solar during daylight hours and coal running 24/7, making up the largest share of the mix.

Wind, hydro and gas, along with any imports from other parts of Australia make up the rest of the supply.

But what you notice is that as solar falls away in the afternoon, there’s a big spike in afternoon demand for power from the grid.

And that’s because most rooftop solar doesn’t come from the grid. Rather, householders generate it themselves.

To show you in a bit more detail, let’s look at a week in March.

Dr McConnell says solar and wind are radically changing the way other generators have to behave.

“We basically see, in the middle of the day in particular, coal plants across the NEM, brown coal and black coal, being squeezed out by renewable energy,” he says.

“We’re seeing coal plants’ overall utilisation essentially decline, but the shape of that utilisation changing dramatically. It is behaving much more like a flexible peaking plant almost.”

Tensions between renewables and base-load generation

You’ve probably heard we’re at the point where sometimes we have too much renewable energy. But that’s not quite right. What we have at times is more renewable than can be accommodated by coal-fired plants.

Particularly in bumper periods like spring and autumn where mild temperatures reduce energy demand, we actually have to curtail — or turn off — solar and wind production to keep coal plants running.

You see, base-load generation needs to avoid shutting down because of both mechanical limitations and operating costs. Like riding a bike, it can only slow down to a minimum speed before it becomes unsafe to operate.

And the grid still needs the stability and security services those base-load plants provide.

When solar is consistently the cheapest form of generation, it creates this awkward scenario where we have to switch off large-scale solar farms to figuratively keep the lights on for coal — effectively paying more than we need to for energy during those times.

Dr McConnell says this “curtailment” of renewable energy is a growing feature of Australia’s electricity system.

It is sometimes caused by physical limitations on the poles-and-wires networks — like a freeway at peak hour, there just isn’t enough capacity to handle anymore electricity.

But it’s also being driven by economics. Renewable energy is pushing wholesale prices to such low, or even negative levels, it doesn’t make sense for wind and solar farms to keep producing at times.

“(Curtailment) basically just represents an amount of generation that is theoretically possible to be generated but isn’t because of a combination of either technical limits or economic conditions,” he says.

“We’re seeing quite a lot of that.

“Some solar farms are upwards of 40 per cent curtailed at different times of the year, sometimes even higher.

“But at an aggregate level, we’re seeing 10 per cent of renewable energy curtailed across the grid.”

To complicate things further, Australia has one of the highest rates of rooftop solar in the world. There are now more than 4 million small-scale installations on homes and businesses all over the country. And rooftop solar can’t just be shut down. It’s growing presence has implications for grid demand and for operators like AEMO to manage.

Remember that metaphor in which AEMO is like a conductor? In the case of rooftop solar, it’s like the audience has started singing along and the conductor has to work out whether to conduct it or when tell it to be quiet.

More than any other technology, it’s rooftop solar that has undermined the business case for coal and forced change on the market. Dr McConnell says coal plant operators are, to a certain extent, learning to adapt to the new world, but at a certain point working this way becomes unprofitable.

“I guess there’s a distinction between being technically possible and economically viable.”

Without new coal being built, we’ve got a limited amount of time until it exits the system. State governments are striking deals to keep some coal plants on for longer, but AEMO still expects most of the fleet to be gone in the next decade.

So, what would a grid without coal look like? Looking at our electricity use on a state level gives us a good idea.

Evolving the grid for the future

Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria are primarily run by coal. WA uses a large share of gas due to its large-scale production in the state. Meanwhile, Tasmania makes use of its water resources for hydro power, with imports from neighbouring Victoria for support.

But take a closer look at South Australia.

South Australia closed its last coal-fired power plant in 2016, and now runs on a mix renewables, gas, imports and, increasingly, batteries.

The grid of the future

Dr Mconnell says SA provides a really useful snapshot into what much of Australia’s grid could look like, but it’s not quite there yet.

He says storage is something that will need to grow. SA is a leader in battery use, but there’s still a long way to go for battery projects in Australia, and even then, batteries aren’t always sufficient or the only solution.

Big batteries generally discharge for about four hours and although there are eight-hour ones coming online, they work well in a cycle of charging up during the day before discharging in the evenings.

For those situations where we might want power over a longer period of time, pumped hydro is another technology that’s on the rise.

Snowy 2.0 in the Snowy Mountains has been hailed as an important addition to the NEM. Essentially, it’s one big battery — you pump water uphill using cheap electricity and then run it though a turbine back down to generate electricity when needed.

The big difference is that storing all this energy in the form of water is easy to do at a scale that’s vast compared to an average battery. It can’t compete with batteries in terms of how quickly it can charge and discharge power, but it can step in when renewable energy levels are lower over longer periods of time.

While we roll these technologies out at scale, open-cycle and peaking gas plants are much better suited to complementing solar and wind power than coal.

Crucially, Dr McConnell says they can run for days or weeks at a time.

“They are complementing renewable energy rather well,” he says.

“They are spending a lot of time offline and then coming on in those critical peaks.”

On the downside, he says gas generators, like coal plants, still face a critical problem — their share of the market is being eroded by renewable energy.

And they, too, produce emissions.

He says it’s hard to make a business case for a plant that only runs some of the time. He says that’s why Australia should be prioritising things that are cheap to build, even if they’re expensive to run.

Longer-term Dr McConnell reckons gas turbines will still be a natural complement to and back-up for intermittent wind and solar power and storage. Whether the gas is natural gas — or fossil gas, as he calls it — or some other type of fuel such as hydrogen is an open question.

What does this mean for nuclear power?

But what is clear, according to Dr McConnell, is there is a very limited role for any base-load power in Australia in the future, let alone large amounts of what is in nuclear almost the ultimate source of round-the-clock generation.

He says that’s why the experience of coal is such a useful way to understand the challenge nuclear faces. In both cases, the up-front — or capital — costs of building the plant are high and construction can take a long time — decades, even.

The key to the economic success of such plants is running them at or near their capacity as much as possible to ensure owners can recoup their huge investments.

The Coalition’s plan assumes that we will run nuclear almost around the clock to recoup those costs, but Dr McConnell says in Australia the experience of coal suggests that’s not feasible.

“If you were running a nuclear power plant flat out, a 90 per cent capacity factor… most of the year, then the cost of that generation is very different to what we might see, say, with a 50 per cent capacity factor,” he says.

“(That) is getting close to what we see in some coal plants in New South Wales at the moment or even lower.

“The costs disproportionately increase as you decrease that utilisation rate.”

And while he acknowledges that technically nuclear plants can be more flexible than brown coal generators, he says that would do little to improve their viability.

“Just to reiterate, being technically flexible and running like that is quite distinct from that being an economically viable thing to do,” Dr McConnell says.

To reconcile the dissonant natures of renewable energy and nuclear power, he argues something will have to give.

Already in New South Wales coal isn’t running at anywhere the level required to make nuclear viable.

But remember that little red line in SA. That’s what’s currently needed to keep the grid secure — a tiny fraction of total demand.

Either nuclear power plants will have to dial down during periods of high green energy production — as coal plants do now — or solar and wind will need to be curtailed or not built at all.

And that won’t mean just turning off solar farms. It’ll also involve turning off rooftop solar and charging households to use power from the grid when they could be getting it for free from the sun.

“If… you’re turning off rooftop solar as opposed to ramping down your nuclear plant, then that’s obviously going to be a politically challenging direction,” Dr McConnell says.

For Dr McConnell, the answers to Australia’s energy problems are not as complicated as they might seem.

He says there’s now so much renewable energy in system — and so much more coming — that trying to turn back the clock in favour of a base-load technology would be folly.

Instead, he argues Australia should come to grips with the likelihood that its grid would soon be dominated by renewable energy — and take the necessary steps to ensure it works properly.

“Essentially, the things that you want to balance renewables… tend towards lower capital cost and higher running costs,” he says.

“And that’s why peakers and gas generators play this role now or fit well with this role.

“They are essentially the opposite of what is provided by a nuclear power plant.”

Could things change in the future?

Elsewhere in the world, nuclear power is enjoying renewed interest as demand for electricity — driven by factors from rising wealth to the growth of data centres and artificial intelligence — surges.

Nuclear power is, after all, already a major source of emissions-free electricity in many places.

Similarly, the electrification of everything — from the cars we drive and our household heating systems, to the industrial processes we use to make things — will add ever more to demand for power.

Even accounting for this, Dr McConnell says the case for nuclear energy in Australia will be a hard sell.

In places where nuclear is resurging, the availability of land or the quality of the wind and solar resources is often lacking. But he says that’s not the case in Australia.

“Honestly, I struggle to see that in Australia, specifically, because we have such an abundance of resources and land and renewable energy capacity,” he says.

“Depending on who you talk to, we’re talking 20 years until a nuclear power plant will be built in Australia. Maybe you could go plus or minus five years on that, but we’re talking a long time.

“And we’ve got a lot of coal-fired power stations that are coming to the end of their technical lives.

“It’s sort of like, ‘Well, what do we do in the meantime?’”

Notes on the data

• Energy data is from OpenElectricity
• Average generation data for states covers the period from 12am March 6 to 8am April 3, 2025
• Average prices by energy source is for the NEM between April 8, 2024 to April 13, 2025
• Data for solar includes both utility and rooftop solar

Credits

• Reporting: Daniel Mercer
• Illustration, graphics and development: Alex Lim
• Production: Alex Lim and Tim Leslie
• Editor: Tim Leslie

Odyssey format by ABC News Story Lab

Why do we treat human variation—or divergence from a norm—as if it’s a malfunction, rather than contextual transformation?

Let's first look at something which we all know changes state and comes in many different forms.  Water.  Ice, steam, mist, humidity, waves, rain ... but

• Ice is not a failure of water. 🌊  

• Steam is not a disorder of water.

• Rain isn’t a malfunction of clouds.

We recognise each of those states as valid.  From childhood we are introduced to many forms of water learning that sometimes, as steam from a kettle, it can hurt.  Other times, running around in a spray of water from a hose, is can be the most fun and yet, other days, as the rain falls on a day we hoped to go for a walk, it can just ruin our plans.  But we don't fixate on getting rid of those states of water forever.

So, Why are we still talking about regulation and dysregulation as though one is right and the other is a problem and should be eliminated?

🧠 Dysregulation Is Not Bad. It’s Biological.

This is not a critique of how the term dysregulation came to be. That word served a purpose, helped build awareness, and gave language to a pattern. It can still be used.

But we’ve evolved. And it may no longer serve us to keep labeling what we feel and experience as something broken.

Because when we name something only in contrast to “good,” we stop learning from it.
We either try to evade, excise, or control it—never explore it.

Think of How to Train Your Dragon.
The dragons were seen as a problem for centuries—dangerous, wild, destructive—until someone said:
“What if they’re not the enemy? What if they’re just... living?”

🔍 Language Shapes Perception: 

Join me for a moment - let's step out from the main hall of water analogies into the corridor!

Language is more than words—it’s how we map reality.
It doesn’t just describe what we see; it teaches us how to value what we see.

Think about the words disorder, dysfunction, or dysregulation.
These prefixes—“dys”, “dis”, “mal”, “un”—don’t just mark a change. They imply a problem. A fall from grace. A wrongness.

But what if these words are shaping how we see the entire spectrum of human experience?

Let’s take a moment to zoom out and consider this:

We don’t say “dyswater” for steam.
We don’t say “malwater” for humidity.

These are seen as states—not value-laden conditions.
There’s no assumed “good” or “bad” among ice, steam, or liquid—just transitions based on environment and context.

What about  Available - Alert - Alarmed

These are descriptions.  They do not provide detail about why or how this state exists. They leave room for every individual experience however they are a good indicator of what regulatory tools are likely to be needed or what skills need to be called on.  No different to driving, in times of emergency and Alarm we will only call on what we have already practiced and know.  We learn most when Available.

⚙️ The Nervous System: Still Vital, Still Intelligent

Let’s explore nervous system states not as good/bad, but as responsive, natural, and intelligent.

1. Rest and Digest: The Regenerative State

(What most people call “regulated”)

• Parasympathetic nervous system leads

• Slower heart rate, deeper breath

• Digestion and bonding activate

• Learning, healing, and connection happen

This is a beautiful state. But it's not the only valuable one.

2. Protect and Act: The Responsive State

(Too often labeled “dysregulated”)

• Sympathetic nervous system takes the wheel

• Adrenaline, cortisol rise

• Alertness spikes, digestion slows

• The body gears up for fight, flight, freeze, or fawn

This isn’t a malfunction.
It’s the body responding to threat or stress in the most precise way it knows how.

Some people flip between these states rapidly. That doesn’t mean they’re failing—it means their safety radar is working overtime.

💡 Feeling Is Not the Problem

Let’s say it clearly:

Feeling is not dysregulation. Feeling is information.

It’s your body talking—not just to the world, but to you.

The nervous system isn’t betraying you. It’s reporting back.

So instead of saying, “Why am I like this?”
We might begin to ask, “What am I learning from this?”

Somewhere it is written that emotion is Energy in Motion (E-motion) and if you can recognise how that energy was generated and ensure it moves through us, then it can make for an easier life.  Others will refer to the somatic experience and how to facilitate body movement so as to maintain emotional balance and stability.

🧬 The Two Generational Wounds

1. Panic Instead of Presence

Many of us were never taught to feel without fear.
We learned that emotions were:

• Punishment

• Chaos

• Weakness

We were taught to shut them down. But here’s the cost:

What we shut down, we can’t learn from.

Even in medicine, healing comes not from suppressing the illness, but studying it. Control can buy time.  Excision can eliminate a problem from view but

Presence is what starts the healing—not avoidance.

2. Performing Peace: Disconnection as Safety

A lot of people—consciously or not—have taught themselves and their children to:

• Numb out

• Pretend

• Suppress

• Perform calm

Why? Because the world rewards it.
Certainty sells. Politeness is safe. (and if we were being cynical, commercialism relied upon it)

But underneath it, something cracks.
Because true safety doesn’t come from pretending. It comes from being with what’s real.

🔄 Humans Aren’t Just Reactive—We’re Reflective

Animals react.
Humans can reflect.

We can learn to:

• Track our nervous system

• Name what’s happening

• Support our own shifting states

• Increase our capacity, not our control

This isn’t about becoming “regulated.”
It’s about becoming more available—to ourselves, to others, to life.

🌱 Adults Change Too

We understand that kids change:
Infant → toddler → teen. We support them accordingly.

But adults change too—and across 50+ years of adulthood!

And yet there’s almost no recognition, modeling, or infrastructure for adult nervous system growth.

We grow, adapt, and respond. But support? It’s scarce.

🪞 Modeling Matters

You wouldn’t expect a child to read if they’d never seen a visual representation of their words. So too, we can't expect children to navigate, regulate or manage emotion beyond what they see adults do.

So why do we expect them to manage their nervous systems without ever seeing us do it?

If we tell a child “you're flipping your lid” but we never name our own overwhelm, what are we expecting?  If we never model consistently a return to Available after being Alert or Alarmed - then it is no wonder they are left confused, or worse, invalidated.

Catchy phrases can’t replace lived modeling.

Show, Don’t Just Say

They need to see:

• Overwhelm named with care

• Regret acknowledged

• Recovery modeled

Not perfection. But presence.

Suggested Shift in Language 🔁🧾

Instead of dysregulation, try:

• Responsive state

• "I'm overwhelmed, I need to focus on regulation for a few minutes"

• "I'm feeling protective, this makes me less available right now"

• Refer to being Available or Alert or Alarmed. These maintain privacy.

• I'm in Alert mode, give me a few minutes to take a look through my concerns

Acknowledgement:  Learning skills takes time because knowing gives you nothing without practice.